The origins of Satan in Judaism

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- zeca
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The origins of Satan in Judaism
OP - May 31, 2015, 12:11 AM

Jason Silverman - The origins of Satan in Judaism

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Scholars looking to understand from where the figure of Satan derives have long appealed to Iranian influence, particularly in the form of the Zoroastrian Angra Mainyu (Ahriman). I argue instead that the first appearance of the term as a noun in the Hebrew Bible ought to be understood as an administrative official of the Achaemenid Empire. This continues a working hypothesis of mine that various aspects of the divine realm was envisioned as similar to the Achaemenid Empire by some in Second Temple Judaism...

http://blogs.helsinki.fi/sacredtexts/2015/05/25/the-origins-of-satan-in-judaism/

The above is from a summary of a longer research article:

Vetting the Priest in Zechariah 3: The Satan between Divine and Achaemenid Administrations

http://jhsonline.org/Articles/article_200.pdf

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- Zimriel
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The origins of Satan in Judaism
Reply #1 - July 19, 2015, 09:42 PM

Thanks for the links. I've posted this on his blog:
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Have you considered writing an aside on Mastema, chief of the fallen-angels? I understand that Mastema is important for Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ‘Enochian’ texts (as Boccaccini labels them). Belial is I think the same character (it’s been awhile since I last looked into this). Mastema seems a much likelier parallel to angra-mainyu.

1 Enoch and Jubilees postdate Zechariah 1-8 by a lot. But I do recall that some traditions in there are considered to be Babylonian-era, like parts of the Astronomical Book, and also the bit about fallen-angels in 1 Enoch 5-11(ish). This is the part that matters.

IMO, your argument would be stronger if it also explained the origins of Mastema (/Belial), and showed how this figure is *not* the Satan. If you prove that Mastema is Late Persian or even Hellenistic in origin then so much the better.
- gal_from_usa
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The origins of Satan in Judaism
Reply #2 - July 20, 2015, 06:36 AM

That's a very interesting study of that one passage. I'm sure the longer thing of which this is an excerpt mentions that the separate stories that have been conflated to all be the modern devil (like the serpent in the garden, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Hades, and the weird goat/man hybrid that is in the modern art) weren't all originally the same, and they all got reduced down to one a lot like what was done to the Canaanite pantheon to make the modern Abrahamic god.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
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